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Aging is a part of life, but that doesn’t mean we’re all enjoying everything that comes with it. If you find yourself less than thrilled in your 40s, welcome to the club. It turns out, researchers who’ve been studying happiness as a “curve” for more than 20 years have found that we’re at our lowest in our 40s.
While it may feel like there’s really no good reason for this unhappiness at this stage of life, there are actually several. In our 40s, everything gets “real,” in lots of ways.
- There’s a lot of pressure and expectations - By the time we’re 40-somethings, we may find what we always thought we wanted isn’t really what we want, or that the life we envisioned for ourselves isn’t playing out as expected.
- More people are relying on you - From aging parents to young kids, this stage of life is sometimes a lot of juggling the demands on our time and duties of taking care of the people in our lives.
- What “me” time? - In your 40s, you may have the least amount of time for yourself, or “me” time, of your life.
So how do we deal with this unhappiness? Start by acknowledging what’s going on.
- Experts advise trying to remember that with all this chaos comes frustration, stress, exhaustion, and some unhappiness, too. There’s so much going on and you’re allowed to be “over it.”
- Figure out your glass balls and your plastic balls. The glass balls are the parts of your life that you just can’t drop, no matter what, while the plastic ones are the things that this week, or month, you can let go of because they don’t matter much in the big picture. They can drop and will bounce, so they’ll be okay.
- Celebrate the little wins. Every day won’t be amazing, some will be just okay, and that’s enough.
Read the article at NY Post