Late Adulthood

Happiness is an essential goal for most people. From books and expensive classes that teach people how to achieve happiness to the fundamental right of “the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence, the importance of happiness is evident in society. This causes the rise to two fundamental questions: “How does one attain happiness?” and “,How does happiness create a meaningful life?” Both happiness and living a meaningful life are achieved simultaneously. The search for happiness and the factors that make it brings meaning to life. Happiness can stem from several factors such as wisdom and knowledge, savoring life and its experiences, and even suffering and pain. Analyzing these factors brings meaning to one’s life.

Life satisfaction – big word! The two words’ meaning differ from each and every person depending on what that person believes is the most important in life - his priority. Life satisfaction is an overall assessment of feelings and attitudes about one's life at a particular point in time ranging from negative to positive. It is one of three major indicators of well-being: life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect (Diener, 1984). According to Wikipedia, Life Satisfaction is the way a person evaluates his or her life and how he or she feels about where it is going in the future. It is a measure of well-being and may be assessed in terms of mood, satisfaction with relations with others and with achieved goals, self-concepts, and self-perceived ability to cope with daily life. It is having a favorable attitude of one's life as a whole rather than an assessment of current feelings. Life satisfaction has been measured in relation to economic standing, amount of education, experiences, and residence, as well as many other topics. There are two kinds of emotions that may influence how people perceive their lives. Hope and optimism both consist of cognitive processes that are usually oriented towards the reaching of goals and the perception of those goals (Bailey, 2007)

Happiness is one of the most significant dimensions of human experience. Many people can argue that happiness is a meaningful and desirable entity. Studies indicate that everyone pursues happiness in various aspects of their life. Our four fathers saw happiness as a need, so they made the pursuit of happiness as one of the three unalienable rights branded in the Declaration of Independence. There is a sense of complexity behind the meaning of happiness; its definition is not definite. Think of happiness as a rope; there are many thin fiber strands bonded together to become the strength of the rope. Like the analogy of the rope, there are numerous factors that can contribute to an individual’s overall happiness in life. This study is going to

The question presented in this study is would increasing the power and control an individual have over their life cause them to be more happy and healthy? This is an important question because the results could help patients in nursing homes to be both happier and healthier. Langer and Rodin's hypothesis was that if patients in a nursing home were given more control over their lives and activities, they would show improvements in mental alertness, activity level, satisfaction with life, and other measures of behavior and attitude.

The amalgam of the human experience and the pursuit of happiness is that of an instinctive and inexorable nature; perchance in happiness lays the fundamental purpose of the human experience. Happiness, throughout the lapse of time—regardless of multifarious discrepancies, such as nationality or age, has proven to be an all-inclusive search. Whether it is derived from power, wealth, success, or elsewhere, happiness is a perpetual pursuit. Illustrious philosopher Aristotle believed “happiness depends upon ourselves (Aristotle)”, speaking to a notion of happiness being an individual endeavor.

According to the classic sense, a life full of happiness is a life that manifests wisdom, kindness, and goodness. However happiness has been twisted by a secular culture and the classic sense has given away to “pleasurable satisfaction”. Pleasurable satisfaction depends on external circumstances going well. Moreland points out that because of this the modern sense of happiness, “pleasurable satisfaction”, is unstable and varies with life’s circumstances. Pleasurable satisfaction becomes increasingly addictive and enslaving if it becomes the dominant aim of one’s life. By contrast, classical happiness brings freedom and power to life as one ought, as one increasingly becomes a unified person who lives for a cause bigger than one’s self. Western culture has been disillusioned into seeking happiness as their main priority in life. Although, happiness is important, when its importance becomes exaggerated, it leads to a loss of purpose in life, and even depression. What Western cultures need to realize is that true happiness can never be achieved. Over the past 50 years, levels of health, wealth, and liberties have increased, but levels of happiness haven’t.

Even if we use the word “happiness” on daily basis, has anyone ever tried to define it? It’s harder than it seems. When do you feel happy? How is it when you feel happy? Is there any way to understand how much happiness to you experience? This is the main hypothesis of this paper – Can happiness or wellbeing be measured? And if it can be measured, how do we measure it? Happiness is feeling pleasure and enjoyment because of your life, situation (Meriam Webster). Pleasure and enjoyment are very subjective and means different things to different people. This is where the term subjective wellbeing comes from. There are a lot of things that can be included when measuring wellbeing. Various studies have been conducted to assess wellbeing and how does it affect other factors. For example Earlstin(1995) and later on Ferrer-i-Carbonell(2005) have examined the relationship between income and happiness. Gruber(2004) studies the relationship cigarette taxation and happier smokers. Richard, Clark, Gerogellis and Diener(2004) analyze the effect of unemployment on wellbeing.

These findings suggest that midlife is a time when people function particularly well relative to those who are younger or older. The capacity to be self-determining and to manage one's surroundings show marked improvement in midlife, compared with young adulthood. Investment in living, and the desire for continued self-realization remains consistently high from young adulthood into midlife, but they drop sharply during older adulthood. Interestingly, self-evaluation, on one hand, and other-evaluation, on the other hand, display similar profiles over the life course. Perhaps aspects of wellness that involve assessments of oneself or the relationship of the "self" and other people remain salient throughout life. Developments in life-span developmental

Two articles formed the basis for this PICO question about caregivers’ satisfaction. The first article conducted a cross-sectional study with a sample of caregivers with different caregiving extents ranging in age 50-89 years with the aim of investigating life satisfaction with contributing factors. This article pays particular attention to the factors associated with the satisfaction of being a caregiver. Part of the study employed a questionnaire using a form called Life Satisfaction Index Z (LSIZ) to measure caregiver’s life satisfaction, with scores ranging from 0 to 26. A high score shows an overall level of high satisfaction. To illustrate, frequent caregivers had lower life satisfaction with an average score of 14.8, whereas,

Later adulthood is the time after age 65 or the last segment of life. This doesn’t mean life ends, rather it’s a new beginning or a new chapter of your life. This is such a diverse age range. It can span over 30 years. Many things change during this stage in age. We are transitioning into retirement or partial retirement for the more adventurous ones. Our living arrangements may change and there are many relationship changes during this stage of life too.

Marianne Williamson said, “In our society, as people pass out of young adulthood, they tend to relate to themselves more in terms of what they are no longer than what they are now, and that’s psychologically low-grade devastating”. As we age, we tend to look at the future, that growth with fear or trepidation. We mourn the loss of our “youth” rather than embrace the new changes we are heading toward. These changes we will experience are vast and necessary for each stage of development. As we grow become adults we will experience a variety of psychological changes as we adjust to aging and any changes that will happen to our lifestyle. These changes should not be feared, they simply mark the growth and experience

Subjective wellbeing has element of both affective and cognitive components. Happiness is defined by Veenhoven as “the degree to which an individual judges the overall quality of his life favourably” (Veenhoven, R., 1991).

Satisfaction with life is oftentimes highly correlated with happiness, but it is not by inherently the same as happiness. One may be satisfied with one’s life outcomes or satisfied with external factors, without being very happy. Once discovering a satisfaction with life rating, one may be able to determine if satisfaction with life is something one can control, and if it is, one may be able to maximize one’s life satisfaction. For instance, if one is typically not searching for a mate, and he or she scores low on this scale, one may be more willing in the future to seek a partner if he or she knows that statistically speaking, people with partners are more satisfied with his or her life.

Happiness is the fundamental objective of life. This bold statement is unanimously agreed upon among generations of people on every corner of our planet. However, the real question that has been contested for centuries is the true meaning of happiness? The true meaning of happiness is one of the most highly debated philosophy topics in history. Most famous are the writings of Aristotle and John Stuart Mill who both paint very opposing pictures of happiness. Mill believes happiness is obtained through pleasure and the absence of pain. On the other hand, Aristotle insist happiness is obtained through living a fulfilling, virtuous life. This passage will examine Aristotle 's and Mill 's views on happiness as well as give an opinion one which philosophical theory is most convincing.

According to Cumming and Henry (1961), the disengagement theory of aging explains that a person and the society mutually separates from each other during the phase of old age (as cited in Moody & Sasser, 2015, p.). However, the proposition of Ding et al. (2016) to craft and implement programs capitalizing on the opportunity presented by older adults’ retirement as a way to alter their behaviors to improve their well-being does otherwise. Rather than allowing older people to disengage, the researchers urges the society, particularly the government and health professionals, to reach out to retirees. Ding et al. (2016) believe that taking advantage of older adults’ retirement would be beneficial in terms of improving public health, especially in the coming years when their number is constantly growing.