7 Habits of People Who Get Happier as They Get Older

Ask anyone to draw their happiness across a lifetime and they draw the same shape: high when young, long decline through the middle, low at the end. That shape is wrong, and has been for decades. Researchers found a U — happiness lowest around midlife, then rising again. And recently the U vanished entirely, not because older people got sadder, but because young adults have been getting dramatically less happy since around 2013. In much of the world now, happiness simply rises with age. Which raises the question: the people getting happier aren't getting healthier or richer. So what are they doing? Here are 7 habits, and the research behind them. Stay for #7. The first six look like things that happen to you with age. The seventh is why you don't have to wait forty years. 🧠 WHAT YOU'LL LEARN Why shrinking social circles with age is selection, not loss What predicts wellbeing after 50 — and what stops predicting it The brain imaging finding behind the "positivity effect" What happened when young adults were asked to imagine limited time The assumption that makes six other habits impossible 📚 RESEARCH MENTIONED Laura Carstensen (Stanford) — socioemotional selectivity theory and the positivity effect Fung, Carstensen & Lutz (1999) — time horizons and social preference Mather & Carstensen — aging and motivated cognition Blanchflower, Bryson & Xu (2025), PLOS One — the global disappearance of the U-shape in age 💬 YOUR TURN Which number stung? That's the one. Drop it below — I read them. 🔔 New video every week on happiness, calm, and how your brain really works. ▶️ WATCH NEXT 7 Habits for When Life Is Fine But You Don't Feel Fine:    • 7 Habits for When Life Is Fine But You Don...   5 Things Happy People Never Do After 8 PM:    • 5 Things Happy People Never Do After 8 PM   #happiness #aging #selfimprovement