Here is a charming article we found from a Philippine News report:

Estrella Clamar turned 100 years last May 3, despite her age, she can still cook, do gardening and go to the market; all by herself.What made her stay that long?

She answers that she always put labor into practice. “If you don’t work, your blood will not properly circulate throughout your body, making you feel weak,” she said.

Her 60-year old daughter Lilia Camral is telling her mother to stop working because of her old age, but her mother just continues to do so because that is what makes her happy!

This native from Iloilo City in the Philippines said that she is still alive because she simply loves to be happy. She said that worrying about problems in a big no-no. “There’s no use in wallowing in our daily problems, as long as there’s joy… dance! I’m a good dancer you know,” she said, laughing.

Source: www.abs-cbn.com

Ironic it may seem but our grandparents are happier than youngsters like us. This is according to a study conducted for more than 30 years by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center.

From 1972 to 2004, the researchers annually interview 1,500 to 3,000 people asking them questions answerable by very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy. They found 33 percent of Americans being very happy at age 88, vs. 24 percent of those age 18 to their early 20s. While women are happier than men and white people are happier than black people. Interestingly, more than half of the people over 80 said they were happy.

“With age comes happiness. That is, overall levels of happiness increase with age, net of other factors,” University of Chicago sociologist Yang Yang said “People tended to be happier during economic good times,”Yang said. “But those born into the crowded and competitive ‘Baby Boom’ generation from 1946 to 1964 were the least happy - probably because some did not get what they wanted out of life,” he said.

“A man’s age is something impressive, it sums up his life: maturity reached slowly and against many obstacles, illnesses cured, griefs and despairs overcome, and unconscious risks taken; maturity formed through so many desires, hopes, regrets, forgotten things, loves. A man’s age represents a fine cargo of experiences and memories.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wartime Writings 1939-1944.

Source: www.reuters.com

Related Article: Happiness needs self-awareness

Young people, enjoy the happy lifestyle now as happiness has a trend of declining as one gets older; it slowly fades away. This is according to the study conducted by the researchers from the Dartmouth College and University of Warwick who collected data from two million people from 80 nations in the span of 35 years.

“Their study, reported last month in the journal Social Science & Medicine, showed that happiness is, in fact, U-shaped: it’s highest at the beginning and end of our lives and lowest in the middle. That translates to deepening levels of depression at around age 40 for women and 50 for men.”

It happens to everyone because people tend to focus on wrong things in life. The good thing is happiness recur after mid-life “By the time you’re 70, if you’re still physically fit, then, on average, you’re as happy and mentally healthy as a 20-year-old,” said one of the authors of the study, Andrew Oswald.

Many people tend to look for happiness in career recognition or status where gaining success is always the priority. According to John Izzo, an author and leadership consultant based in Vancouver, “life isn’t a contest,” he said.

“They discover that these things don’t give the happiness they’re promised in them,”

Meanwhile, some people from ages 58 to 70 who seldom gained success in their work is successful in their lives.

“But they never had to go through the stage of being disillusioned with their lives because they had already recognized that happiness is not found in status and money, Mr. Izzo said.”

During his numerous interviews for his book, The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die, Mr. Izzo learned that happy people focused “on the things they love rather than on outside definition of success.”

It is not inevitable for a person to fall in a mid-life depression. All one needs is self-awareness. “If you think about it, being true to yourself is a call to happiness,” he said.

“If you know who you are, you stand a much better chance of living the life that suits you.”

(Read Canada.com, image courtesy of meyshandworld.)