Finding Happiness In A Midlife Crisis

There's a reason why the term "midlife crisis" is so overused. It's due to the fact that it's a genuine phenomenon. In social science research, the midlife crisis is represented on a U-shaped curve. Our middle years are the lowest point on a U-shaped graph depicting our happiness throughout the course of our life. 

What makes us miserable in our Middle Age, and what can we do about it?

Humans aren't the only ones who get depressed in the middle of their lives; monkeys do as well. A study found that great apes, like humans, had low moods in their middle years. "Being content at times of their life where people have fewer resources to improve their lot, would be less likely to encounter situations that could be harmful to them or their relatives," the study's authors argue.

Is it possible that the reason our happiness declines as we get older is that we take more significant risks? It's the age when we start our careers, get married, start a family, and (if we're lucky) buy a house. However, it is also the age when career setbacks or job losses can have the most serious consequences.

Perhaps we should look at why people in later phases of life are happier in order to be happier in the middle period of our lives. Here are suggestions for staying happy in your middle age and avoiding a midlife crisis:

• Allow yourself to let go of unrealistic expectations

"One potential explanation" for the vertical pattern beginning with regards to age 47, as indicated by David Blanchflower, one of the review's creators, "is that people figure out how to conform to their abilities and shortcomings, and around midlife smother their infeasible desires". Tolerating your qualities and inadequacies, just as relinquishing your "unthinkable dreams" from when you were more youthful, may prompt a superior presence. Things being what they are, at 30 years old, you didn't compose a smash hit novel? All in all, why bother? Rather than scolding yourself for not doing what you expected to by your age, center around what you have cultivated, the delights you have in your life, and what you actually bring to the table.

• Sustain significant connections and put resources into what satisfies you

In their work "Emotional Experience Improves With Age," psychologist Laura Carstensen and colleagues wrote, "As people, age and time horizons shorten, people invest in what is most important, often meaningful relationships, and gain ever-greater happiness from these investments". "Emotional experience improves with age," they write, "because people come to appreciate and put more effort in areas of life that are significant to them." Make time for your buddies if you want to be happier. Don't skip a close friend's birthday celebration because you're exhausted from a long week at work. 

• Seize the day, my friend!

"At the point when the future turns out to be less far off, more compelled, individuals center around the present, and we imagine that is better for enthusiastic experience," Carstensen says. Our objectives change, as well, as we age. "The objectives that are persistently initiated in advanced age are ones about the significance and relishing and living for the occasion." She says. "As individuals see the future as progressively compelled, they put forth objectives that are more sensible and simple to seek after." all in all, to be more joyful, you need to quit moving the goal lines to an ever-increasing number of unreasonable distances.

• Sympathize with your companions.

"Maybe understanding that such sentiments are totally ordinary in midlife may even assist people with enduring this stage better," Blanchflower recommends. "Reassuringly, when you are 70, assuming you are still in great shape than on normal you are as glad and intellectually solid as a 20-year-old." Just realizing that the U-molded bend exists might be useful. "It might assist individuals with realizing that others are going through exactly the same thing, yet it will before long begin to improve," Blanchflower says. You're in good company in your midlife nervousness; it's totally normal. Thus, quit thumping yourself about it.

Sympathizing with what makes us troubled in our middle-age is likewise what can make us most joyful—on the off chance that we simply change our reasoning a little. Rather than considering life a progression of errands, you should finish—get hitched, have children, purchase a house—attempt to consider life to be a progression of conceivable outcomes. 

We have a propensity for both castigating ourselves when we don't hit customary life markers (marriage, and so on) on our willful timetable and worrying with regards to those things (kids, and so on) when we in all actuality do achieve them. We recall the things we didn't as yet do, and stop taking a gander at what we have.