According to the economist I am about to take a big dive in life satisfaction – well, actually, it’s “self-reported well being.” As if we GenXers didn’t have it hard enough, it seems that regardless of generational cohort, life satisfaction takes a dive starting in the late 30s and bottoming out at around 50. The way I see it, the bad news is that our life satisfication should be steadily decreasing right now – the good news is that we’re not 50 yet.
The question is what to do about this trend. I can really understand that, given all that people have going on in their 30s and 40s it can be pretty difficult to make space for those things that may increase our sense of happiness. They do note that having children in the house tends to lower one’s score, so I suppose I could just hold my breath until the kids leave. But as Nadia is only 2 months old, this doesn’t seem like a particularly good plan. It seems their main theory is that as we age we are more able to live in the present and be less judgemental and reactive.
The good news about statistics is that you can always beat the mean.
It makes me wonder about how much in these decades we are resisting our lives – resisting the actual careers, children, and homes we have. Striving for the next thing – or perhaps just pining for something different. Or perhaps it’s just that constant stress of feeling that we never have enough time to get to what’s important. The question is how can we still strive to make our lives better and more meaningful, without resisting our lives the way they are now?
So, my challenge for 2011 is to try to create more time/energy in my life. Because it’s not so much that my life takes up all my time, as much as it takes up all my energy. And I do believe much of that energy drain is indeed resistance to what already is. So, my plan is to use a trick – engage in activities that create energy in the little time that I have, thereby creating more energy/time. That, and do my darndest to not resist all the time I need to spend on all the other necessary things in my life. Hmm, we’ll have to see how that one works out!
Anyone out there been successful in bending the time/space continium and creating the sense of more time?
live more leadership 
Basically, you won’t get it all done, at least not in one life. When you have some acceptance about this then you can let some things go and cherish others. I find the more I do this, the more time I have because time becomes an eternal ebb and flow. I am much more connected and in flow now then I was in my twenties when I was afraid of and at odds with everything. If you have beliefs that you are running out of time, or that time is finite, you will find evidence of this and become more anxoius. This is what the article is refering to and it would act as evidence of such. I don’t resonate with it much.
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