Aging America, Trends And Projections ( Annotated ) Essay

Lyubomirsky defines happiness as the “experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile” (184). She challenges the myths that people can find happiness by changing their circumstances and that people either are “born happy or unhappy” (186). Happiness is not something that can be found or something that not everyone can have. People make their own happiness, despite the difficulties they may face. Happiness comes by “choosing to change and manage your state of mind” (185). Lyubomirsky gives cases of people who are happy even though they suffer from losses and setbacks. These are the people whose circumstances should make them unhappy, but their intentional actions bring them joy. She also gives cases of people who have not suffered any major losses but are still unhappy because they may see events negatively and feel helpless before them. Lyubomirsky asserts that “changes in our circumstances, no matter how positive and stunning, actually have little bearing on our well-being” (186). Even though a person’s circumstances may be positive, those circumstances do not make them happy. Lyubomirsky uses a Subjective Happiness Scale to measure happiness, which takes the average of numerical answers to four questions. She argues that in order to become happier, “you need to determine your present personal happiness level, which will provide your first estimate of your happiness

In 1965 the first Aging American’s Act was passed. This legislation was part of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society reform. In passing this legislation nearly 50 years ago, the government created a new department the focused on the rights and needs of the gaining population called the United States Administration on Aging. The original legislation was complete with seven titles. The articles include Title I—the Declaration of Objectives for Older Americans; Title II—Establishment of Administration on aging; Title III—Grants for state and community programs on aging; Title IV—Activities for health and independence, and longevity; Title V—Community service senior opportunities act; Title VI—Grants

Lang, explains through a series of scientific studies that pessimism can sometimes be a better form of seeing life than optimism. Throughout the article studies are being done on different age groups, the youngest group always shows a “sunny” outlook on life while the middle aged group is logical and realistic. Optimism has shown health complications and mental issues in older people (Lang, 2013). I usually do not think negatively about life, but as an improvement I should start seeing life for what it truly is, unpredictable and inconvenient in order to prevent a distasteful lifestyle in the

Aging is divided into the young old, the old old, and the oldest-old (Moddy & Sasser, 2015, p. 6). In contrast, the life perspective view states that views about aging changes as we change and our lives change (Brothers, 2016).Within aging biological changes occur as the progression to oldest-old occurs. My internship was at an assisted living facility; therefore I have spent a considerable amount of time with the oldest-old. Yes, their bodies are no longer functioning at optimal level, but they are successfully aging. I say that because each one of them offers a unique gift to those who take a moment and listen. For example, one evening in memory care, a resident did not want to eat and was loudly expressing it to everyone within earshot. She was quite hostile towards the man sitting across the table from her. I said her name, so she stopped yelling and looked at me. I said, “Hey why are you yelling, I love when you sing.” She began to sing, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.” She sang another song, and the gentleman she was yelling at joined in as a duet. For a half-hour she preformed for us. The table joined in the singing as did staff filtering in from around the building. As she closed her show and thanked everyone for coming, tears streamed from the caregivers faces. This dear lady, with the frail body drew on her life of music and shared her gift one last time. Bringing all that joy into the room is an example of successful aging.

Growth and development is an essential part of the life cycle, which leads to the occurrence of different phases like childhood, teenage and late adulthood. Aging is the period which is characterized by the onset of personal, cognitive and social changes. They feel hard to adjust the changes. Like rest of the world, the US also falls in the list of countries which have the highest population of elderly people. According to the Population Reference Bureau report, Americans ages 65 and older has projected to increase more than double from 46 million today to over 98 million by 2060, and the 65-and-older age group’s share of the total population will rise to nearly 24 percent from 15 percent (Mark Mather). The

Following Malcolm Gladwell’s idea on “the story of success”, Sonja Lyubomirsky put happiness to the test. Happiness has many great advantages that some may not think about. Studies shown happiness leads to stronger relationships, higher work performance, and even living longer with many health benefits.

There is, however, an intrinsic and unavoidable vulnerability that exists within old age and that vulnerability is directly coordinated with loss. Loss of roles can be an extremely difficult and challenging process to adjust to, yet it is a natural progression of old age. Moreover, loss of relationships can be even more challenging to overcome. Individuals in their later years have more exposer to loss, grief, and isolation than at any other point in their lives. Having a life partner who is living and increase life satisfaction, but when that partner dies, that satisfaction can decrease (BZ, 2013).

Life Review (p.340): This concept is important for the self-understanding of people in adulthood. It happens in Erikson’s last stage of his theory when the adult is analyzing their past memories and creating a more meaningful comprehension of their life accomplishments. I found this concept interesting because it mentioned that holding on to regrets is not helpful because as we get older,

In both studies, they review the literature and most of it points to the conclusion that age does not decrease unhappiness. Though Holahan et al. (2008) found a small, yet statistically significant, decrease in happiness from 66-86 years old, they also note that positive expectations of old age decreased the drop. However, as Lacey et al. (2011) noted, even older people can have the age-happiness bias. Lacey et al. (2011) set out to demonstrate the nature of the bias, supporting their hypothesis that age itself would skew happiness ratings by younger people. This was the case with the negative stories, but not with positive stories, which they interpreted as being due to not being able to search memory in the positive stories, but noted that this is not the only effect because it did not hold true with negative memories. Thus, they conclude that the mechanism through which the age-happiness bias is expressed is more complex than they first thought. Though both of the studies were published in the last 10 years, the Holahan et al. (2008) used data that was collected between 1972 and 1992, which may skew the results. In addition, both studies used very specific populations, which may not be representative of American society as a whole. For example, Holahan et al. (2008) used

“Regret: Facing, Feeling and Healing the Heartache of Lost Possibilities” is an article written by Miriam Mason Martineau and published by The Huffington Post. The writer talks about how people reaching midlife start experiencing regret on various aspects of their lives; for a lot of persons, this remorse won’t go away and will keep coming back. It is mentioned how a person should be brave against feelings of regret and try to free themselves from this negative thoughts. The writer also mentions that if we look at our past, we have not always made the right choices, however, we should not feel bad for the choices we’ve made as lessons have been learnt from this so we can take better decisions in our future, a future that can be shaped if we

We believe that the most beneficial intervention for making people happier is “Three Good Things In Life”. This intervention includes writing three good things that happened to you during the day and way they happened to you, every day before going to sleep. We think that this intervention will increase happiness and decrease depression, for the following reasons: there are studies that confirms this; we think this intervention will make people think through their day about three good things to put on their list; and, we think this intervention will cause people to look more on the bright side of life.

There are numerous ways to define successful aging. The word “aging” usually has a negative connotation. However, when putting the word success behind it introduces positive aspects that can essentially promote a long-term developmental outcome for an individual. Happening around midlife and late adulthood, successful aging is simply when an individual has complete development and maintenance of control throughout life, has achieved in the selection of goals and purposes, as well as maximization of gains and compensations of failure. This is the complete and ultimate goal for those in their late adulthood and is quite fascinating to developmental scientist. Those who engross themselves with attempting to achieve a successful aging will most likely have characteristics which in turn encourage and advocate for things such as health, growth, and vitality, maintaining social encounters and productive activities, and lastly maintaining high physical and cognitive functioning. Two developmental scientist, Vaillant & Mukamal, have discovered the factors that predict satisfaction of life are those an individual is able to control. These factors include are health habits, marital stability, years of education, and coping strategies. On the other hand those factors that are out of an individual 's control can not predict the level of happiness or satisfaction with life. These include the length of life of a family member, early health status, parental SES, and family warmth in

Nostalgia is defined as a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one 's life, to one 's home or homeland, or to one 's family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time. (Dictionary.com) Nostalgia is often caused by something prompting the individual of an event or detail from their past. In theory, nostalgia is a wonderful experience of reminiscing on memories in the past, but every so often nostalgia can have negative effects on one’s mindset. The result of these feelings and emotions can range through many different things, from happiness, to sorrow, to anger. In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Mohsin Hamid suggests that in difficult times in people’s lives, nostalgia happens, and can evoke different emotions in people.

Ashley discussed her happiest memories through her life with the common theme of family. Starting from when she was a child her favorite memory relates to coming home from school with the expectation her mother will be there. She waited all day to go back home and enjoy time with her family. She loved to watch her mother cook and greatly enjoyed sitting next to her mother while she was cooking. She believes being with her family provided a sense of togetherness and camaraderie. She reminisced on the feeling of

The articles presented have been published after 1996 and contain varied methods of research attainment. The participants span from the general public, to more specific age groups. Smith et al.’s (2017) study examine the effects of a 1-week savoring intervention on older adults’ psychological resilience/well-being, 111 adults ages 60 or over, by completing measures of resilience, depressive symptoms, and happiness pre- and post-intervention. A significant number of the methods include self-reports. Gross et al. (2012) completed a emotion regulation questionnaire (ERQ) assessed by asking questions like: “Overall, how successful would you say you are at altering your emotions, using a scale from 1 to 10?” Quoidbach et al. (2010) had 282 participants complete measures of positive affect, life satisfaction,