Midlife Happiness: 17 ways to feel good

I loved this article on how to keep ourselves feeling good. 
The opportunity we have to adopt healthy approaches in midlife— such as not smoking, developing good relationships and finding positive ways to cope with life’s inevitable distresses — we can make all the difference to our experience of of old age.
My advice is to celebrate which of these you are doing, and then take one or two others to start incorporating into your life.

My top 9 picks are:

1.  Stop unhelpful thinking patterns; worrying about things you can’t change, can become a habit and be damaging to long-term happiness
2. Spend time with close friends and family, be around other people more often, and when possible to do nice things for others.
3. Keep on learning: Curiosity nudges the brain into a very healthy state. Stimulation, preserves a healthy mood, a happy mood, a stable mood.
4. Engage in physical activity and embrace challenges. It reinforces the sense of ‘I can do this’. I witness this everyday in my work.
5. Don’t get caught in a trap of doing everything for everyone else at the expense of looking after you.
6. Nature-related awe is correlated with better long-term mental health. 
7. Look after your gut health as low-grade chronic inflammation (caused by poor gut health) can trigger depressive, low-mood symptoms.
8.Watch alcohol intake, as this never helps long term mood or gut health.
9. Keep moving throughout the day. It’s anti-inflammatory, and many different hormones and neurotransmitters are produced when we exercise that have a positive impact on mood, memory and wellbeing.

To discover the others read……

Midlife Happiness: 17 ways to feel good

A Harvard professor has written a book on the secret to being happy later in life. Anna Maxted reports

Ageing is inevitable. How we age is not. That’s the message of the book From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life, written by the Harvard professor Arthur C Brooks, already a bestseller in the US and published in the UK next week. Brooks suggests that our contentment levels in later years largely depend on the choices we have made in the preceding decades.

To prove this he draws on the Harvard Study of Adult Development, a project started in 1938 to follow men from youth to adulthood, since expanded to include women, which examines people’s lifestyles, habits, relationships and happiness.

While we can’t control everything, Brooks argues, if we adopt healthy approaches in midlife — such as not smoking, developing good relationships and finding positive ways to cope with life’s inevitable distresses — we can make all the difference to our experience of old age.

So what do we need to do now to give us the best chance of having a happier, healthier future? Here, leading experts share their knowledge.

Get a grip on unhelpful thoughts

Unhelpful thinking patterns, worrying about things you can’t change, can become a habit and be damaging to long-term happiness, says the consultant clinical psychologist Elizabeth Kilbey.

You can’t avoid negative thoughts altogether, but you can get a grip on them, she says. When a thought pops up, think, “Am I going to delete it, defer it, or action it?” Ask if it’s relevant, either now or later. “If not, get rid of it or move on,” she says. “Not speculating about the future or worrying about the past, just being in the here and now, is the most healthy state of mind.”

Spend money on good experiences, not on more stuff

Spending on Doing Promotes More Moment-to-Moment Happiness than Spending on Having was the title of a 2020 research paper produced at the University of Texas. It’s among a body of research that shows that if you aren’t struggling financially, money spent on experiences rather than material goods generates greater long-term happiness.

Bruce Hood, a psychology professor who runs the Science of Happiness course at the University of Bristol, explains: “You get used to material things very quickly, but experiences are transient, and memories become gilded over time.” Plus, he says, the “doing” is often with others — one of our main sources of happiness.

Do things for other people

Self-care and planning for a better future should not be associated with being selfish, says the cognitive scientist Laurie Santos, a professor of psychology at Yale University and a world expert on happiness. “Happy people tend to spend a lot of time with close friends and family, be around other people more often, and they tend when possible to do nice things for others.”

Never stop learning

Mithu Storoni, a neuroscience researcher and the author of Stress-Proof, says: “As you grow older you accumulate wisdom, but opportunities for wonder start declining.”

However, emerging data suggest curiosity is good for the brain — particularly the ageing brain. “Having a state of mind — and an existence — that permits curiosity nudges the brain into a very healthy state,” Storoni says. Such stimulation, she continues, “preserves a healthy mood, a happy mood, a stable mood”.

Embrace challenge

Feeling we have agency — as opposed to passively letting things happen to us — boosts mood at all ages, Storoni says. So we should engage in physical activity and embrace challenges. “It reinforces the sense of ‘I can do this’. That creates a sense of confidence, which relates directly to mood.”

In midlife we can feel a loss of strength, Storoni says. “But if you can, at 58, go and climb a mountain, you will not feel ‘I’m no longer young’.” Or it might be a run, a tough yoga pose, a cold swim — it all has a hugely positive effect on your state of mind, she says.

Expect to feel sad sometimes

“If you look at people who report having high wellbeing, they’re not necessarily experiencing positive emotions all the time,” Santos says. “There are times when it’s normal to be sad, angry or uncertain, or frustrated — normal reactions to events.” And as Hood points out, you need to have experienced unhappiness sometimes to be able to appreciate feelings of joy. “Happiness is relative,” he says.

Don’t give up on sex

A 2018 study published in the journal Sexual Medicine found that wellbeing is higher among older adults when they are sexually active. It also found that sex often declines in midlife, around the ages 50-59.

Good sex boosts wellbeing but bad sex does the opposite, says the New York sex therapist Stephen Snyder, the author of Love Worth Making: How to Have Ridiculously Great Sex in a Long-Lasting Relationship. So to keep sex from dwindling in midlife he advises seeking ways to keep the daily erotic charge in your relationship. When you kiss your partner goodbye, for example, instead of a peck try to hold their gaze and make it a sensual moment.

Nurturing a sensual and an emotional connection makes sex better, he says, even if you are no longer doing it every night. “Think of sex like dancing,” he says. “There are the emotional benefits of dancing itself. But there’s also the benefit of having someone ask you to dance. The feeling of being wanted and enjoyed. That’s a huge ingredient for happiness.”

Take yourself to a place where you can feel amazed by nature

You can feel “wowed” in natural surroundings, Storoni says. “You might feel awe when someone produces the latest phone, but that’s completely different to the awe you’d feel looking at a magnificent mountain or spectacular view.”

Nature-related awe is correlated with better long-term mental health. “The more awe experiences you have, the more likely you are to have a better state of mind,” Storoni says.

Look after your gut health

Inflammation is part of our immune response, says Jenna Macchiochi, a lecturer in immunology at the University of Sussex and the author of Your Blueprint for Strong Immunity. When fighting flu, you feel low, tired, withdrawn. “We call these ‘sickness behaviours’,” Macchiochi says. “This is inflammation acting on your brain to change your behaviour to give you the best chance of getting well again.”

But if our gut wall is compromised, bacteria can leak through, causing low-grade chronic inflammation. “This can trigger some of these depressive, low-mood symptoms.” If we eat to nourish our gut bugs, they produce a pharmacy of metabolic waste products, “post-biotics”, which help to preserve gut barrier integrity, she explains. Plus, the gut and the brain communicate. So if you’re nervous, you get butterflies in your stomach. Likewise, a happy gut sends signals to the brain: “We’re relaxed, everything’s good.”

Keep moving throughout the day

We’re not designed to be sedentary for five hours and then go to the gym, Macchiochi says. That one burst doesn’t cancel out the unhealthy effects of sitting. “We work better physically, mentally, when we move more often, and in lots of different ways.”

She adds: “It’s anti-inflammatory, and many different hormones and neurotransmitters are produced when we exercise that have a positive impact on mood, memory and wellbeing.” Keeping up good movement has been shown to have multiple benefits as you age.

Watch your alcohol intake

As Brooks notes, research shows that alcohol abuse is “one of the most powerful predictors of winding up sad-sick” — that is, with mental and physical ill health. “It can have a big impact on our sleep quality, which can in turn lead to low mood.”

Alcohol is also a gut irritant, he notes — and gut health is linked to mental wellbeing. Plus, it can directly affect how our brain cells signal to each other. “You feel relaxed but these effects are often short-lived and can exacerbate low mood when they wear off.”

Don’t be a midlife martyr

In midlife it’s easy to spend a lot of time doing what we have to do, not what we want to do, Kilbey says. As a result, many of our relationships become functional and superficial. We may be dealing with the needs of demanding teenagers, ageing parents, a challenging job.

“Often you find yourself being a role rather than a person,” Kilbey says, adding that it’s important to take the time to invest deeply in your own relationships and the people who make you feel better. “Identify your own needs, and allow people to meet those needs,” she says.

Embrace all your emotions

Just as it is OK to feel sad, for longer-term contentment you need to be able to listen to all your emotions — good and bad — paying attention and reacting to them appropriately, Santos says.

She teaches a meditation practice called recognise, allow, investigate and nurture (Rain). “You take five minutes to recognise the emotion you’re experiencing, admit you’re allowing it to be there, then investigate what it feels like in your body.”

Emotions often work like a wave, she says, and tolerating them is called “urge surfing” — you let the wave wash over you and take its course.

Keep on dancing

In Stress-Proof, Storoni cites the mood-boosting effects of dancing. Dancing alone, she says, “moving at a certain frequency, in line with music, creates a synchrony in the brain — that creates a state of happiness. Making that prediction that the next beat is going to fall now, and I’m going to time my next footstep with it — as soon as the two come together you feel really good. It’s almost as if you’re making the beat happen.” And dancing with someone, even a stranger, creates interpersonal synchrony. “That creates a sense of social connectedness and mental wellbeing.”

Have a morning routine that will set you up for the day

If we start the day anxious, fearful, frazzled, those feelings usually worsen until we collapse into bed feeling terrible, says Toby Oliver, a therapist, yoga teacher and the co-author of Rise and Shine: How to Transform Your Life Morning by Morning.

He suggests a morning routine that sets you up for the day, to influence your experience of it. Vital ingredients, he says, are silence (moments of stillness, even if it is just a quiet coffee), a burst of happiness (whatever brings joy, such as stepping outside into the garden), intention (in which you decide how you want your day to go), nourishment (perhaps cutting down on the news and listening to a funny podcast instead) and exercise (which is vital for movement and de-stressing and can be as simple as a quick yoga pose).

Think about getting a dog or a cat

Studies show that pet ownership benefits the mental wellbeing and physical health of older people, Storoni says. This includes proved improvements to pain, blood pressure, stress, depression and anxiety.

She believes part of the reason is that our ancestors lived in close groups, unlike in western society now. “This is especially true from middle age onward. Families become more and more atomised.” A pet fills that gap — plus, their companionship is non-judgmental.

A job that expresses your values will give you purpose

Having a sense of meaning and purpose really matters for our wellbeing, Santos says, so if your values and character strengths are used in the work you do it’s not just a job, it can be more of a calling. This isn’t going to be an option for everyone, but you can still think about what you care about and try to build that more into your work and daily life, she says.

Anna Maxted

Saturday March 12 2022, 12.01am, The Times