The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Hard in the Middle, Then Gets Much Better

by Jonathan Rauch

This book will change your life by showing you how life changes.

Why does happiness get harder in your 40s? Why do you feel in a slump when you’re successful? Where does this malaise come from? And, most importantly, will it ever end?

Drawing on cutting-edge research, award-winning journalist Jonathan Rauch answers all these questions. He shows that from our 20s into our 40s, happiness follows a U-shaped trajectory, a “happiness curve,” declining from the optimism of youth into what’s often a long, low slump in middle age, before starting to rise again in our 50s.

This isn’t a midlife crisis, though. Rauch reveals that this slump is instead a natural stage of life—and an essential one. By shifting priorities away from competition and toward compassion, it equips you with new tools for wisdom and gratitude to win the third period of life.

And Rauch can testify to this personally because it was his own slump, despite acclaim as a journalist and commentator that compelled him to investigate the happiness curve. His own story and the stories of many others from all walks of life—from a steelworker and a limo driver to a telecoms executive and a philanthropist—show how the ordeal of midlife malaise reboots our values and even our brains for a rebirth of gratitude.

Full of insights and data and featuring many ways to endure the slump and avoid its perils and traps, The Happiness Curve doesn’t just show listeners the dark forest of midlife, it helps them find a path through the trees. It also shows how we can—and why we must—do more to help each other through the woods.

Praise for The Happiness Curve:

"The Happiness Curve delivers on the promise of its title, with wise insights and practices to help you become the best you can be. Leave the midlife slump. Enter into an encore adulthood of powerful purpose." — Richard Leider, international bestselling author of The Power of Purpose, Repacking your Bags, and Life Reimagined

"Do you wish to understand the arc of your life? And why you are likely to end up happier than you are right now? If so, The Happiness Curve is the best place to start. And I write this as someone who can vouch that the upper part of the happiness life curve is very glorious indeed." — Tyler Cowan, New York Times bestselling author of The Complacent Class and The Great Stagnation

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Self Help, Personal Development, Health, Audiobook, Philosophy

256 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 1, 2018

Reviews

[Julie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Are you an upper-middle class/wealthy white male who lives in an urban setting and is successful in your career? If so, then this is the book for you! It reminds me a lot of Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In - focusing on a narrow, highly successful group of people and then acting like their situation is applicable to all. It's not.

I know from reading other books about aging that it does seem to be the case, that the older you get, the more contented you are. However, Rauch does a terrible job getting this point across. He talks almost exclusively with a limited group. Oh, he does talk to one black person, 2 men who are not successful white collar professionals & a few women who are successful white collar professionals as well. But mainly it's just a group of interchangeable men who tell the same story with slight variations.

One guy - a successful businessman who travelled around the world - made a particularly irritating comment. He wished sometimes that he could chuck it & all leave his life & go be a hotel clerk. Uh....what? So then what the situation with the middle aged hotel clerk? Is he feeling the same feelings this successful businessman is? Is the midlife slump happening to him? Or is he just a simple peasant who doesn't go through this happiness curve? Why not go interview some middle aged hotel clerks and see what they fantasize about changing their life into?

Quite a few of the men interviewed go through divorces in their 40s but then rebound in their 50s and make successful second marriages to (younger?) women, stating that this time it's great because they are relaxed, not so hung up on their careers, paying more attention to their relationships etc. Ok, that's cool that they have changed but couldn't they have kept their marriage going AND changed? Why throw out wife number one? I'm guessing she was a similar age and also going to a midlife slump. How did the divorce affect her life? Is she super happy now too & married again? Who knows! Rauch doesn't interview any of the wives. I do know that divorce has a huge negative impact on women's finances - how does that play into the happiness curve?

Rauch writes about the irritating cliches concerning midlife crisis. Then he gives a bunch of examples of MALE midlife crisis cliches. He does mention it's hard to find any cliches about female midlife crisis and gives one example that does not seem to fall under that rubric at all - a cartoon of a middle aged woman trying on clothes that don't fit anymore. Uh....no. The reason Rauch can't find anything about female midlife crisis is because the main issue with women hitting that age is they become invisible. He should have referenced that great scene in the tv show Grace & Frankie when the women go to a store to buy cigarettes and are completely ignored by the male sales clerk, who comes to life when a female shopper in her twenties comes into the store. THAT is the issue - society deems us disposable once our sexuality is found unappealing. (Cough - all those divorces mentioned above, trading in the first wife for a newer model - cough).

Another bugaboo I had with this book is the padding - oh, the padding! Next to the word filler in the dictionary, is an image of this book. He could have filled the book with relevant information concerning all middle aged people, not just a small subsection of them. Instead he pads the book with information about life coaches, wisdom studies(ending it by saying wisdom isn't something all old people have - so why spend so many pages discussing it) and lots of discussion about some painting he saw in a museum that really resonated with him. Hmmmm.

I am so disappointed in the book. I was hoping to find something that spoke to me and my situation as a 50 year old woman but nope. I guess I need to keep looking.

[Cheri · Rating 3 out of 5]

!! NOW AVAILABLE !!

“When I'm ridin' round the world
And I'm doin' this and I'm signin' that
And I'm tryin' to make some girl, who tells me
Baby, better come back maybe next week
Can't you see I'm on a losing streak

I can't get no, oh, no, no, no, hey, hey, hey
That's what I say, I can't get no, I can't get no
I can't get no satisfaction, no satisfaction
No satisfaction, no satisfaction”
-- (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, Songwriters: Keith Richards / Mick Jagger

”I interviewed dozens of people for this book trying to understand in an intimate, textured way how they experience life satisfaction over time. I have learned what we all already know. There is no single, standard trajectory for human happiness.”

”Knowing the independent effect of age on happiness tells us no more about our actual lives than knowing the independent effect of pitching on baseball tells us about who actually wins the game.

“The answer lies in understanding what the happiness curve is really saying, which is this: It is perfectly possible to be very satisfied with your life in middle age, but it is harder.”

The best non-fiction is as easy and rewarding to read as the best fiction, it holds your interest, it focuses on facts in a way that makes it all that much more real, a visual, and maybe emotional experience. This was, for the most part, not a book I ever felt fully engaged in, and while it had some parts that were more compelling, it felt mired down by the way it was told.

Essentially, The Happiness Curve is a different view on that period of life frequently referred to as a “mid-life crisis” is really a “curve,” which means that after that period of dissatisfaction, life satisfaction goes back up, creating a U shape. At least according to the charts – meaning that there is no guarantee, but the majority of people come out of the mid-life period of “dissatisfaction” with their focus changed.

This period of life that creates this U Shape is what Rauch calls the Happiness Curve.

For me, this book had it’s own curve, and began showing more of a personality at the mid-point, and it began to hold my interest more, for a while. There are a lot of points he makes, repeatedly, in various ways. After a while that was annoying.

I wouldn’t consider it a Happiness Curve in the Pharrell Williams sense, I would equate it more with a calmer sense of happiness, a higher level of appreciation for life, in general, for contentment rather than needing as much high levels of excitement, at least from the examples he cited.

Pub Date: 1 MAY 2018


Many thanks for the ARC provided by St. Martin’s Press / Thomas Dunne Books

[Larry · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a tedious book. Jonathan Rauch is a competent journalist, and does well summarizing the work of scientist and other thinkers about happiness. However, he attempts to make his own contribution to the field by conducting a survey and using the experience of his correspondents and his own life story to illustrate the scientific findings. There are dome nuggets of interesting material here, but the reader is mining low-grade ore.

One section I found interesting was where he summarized the factors that another survey found to contribute most strongly to people's reported well-being.

- social support: having someone to count on in times of trouble
- generosity: people are happier when they do generous things and live among generous people
- trust: corruption and dishonesty are bad for life satisfaction
- freedom: feeling that you have sufficient freedom to make important life decisions
- income per capita
- healthy life expectancy.

My recommendation: don't read this book. Read the books and the authors that Rauch cites

[Jenn "JR" · Rating 5 out of 5]

We've all heard the jokes about midlife crisis and folks who are experiencing difficulties in midlife are often pooh-poohed -- I remember one middle aged friend laughing at midlife crises as self-indulgent, saying "I can't afford a midlife crisis!"

Would we do the same thing with respect to adolescents? There may be many satires and jokes about adolescence but we are all very aware of the real changes and challenges faced by humans in this phase of their development. It exists and it's not a joke.

Well, the same can be said of midlife, as it turns out. Jonathan Rauch's book, "The Happiness Curve" starts off by diving into a huge pile of research: dozens of research teams have seen this u-shaped curve in self-reported life satisfaction scores. We start off VERY happy in life and our satisfaction gradually decreases at mid-life, and then begins to increase again after this midlife trough. It's not just cultural -- it's found across multiple cultures and samples across decades. And, it's not just humans -- researchers working with primates around the world, in various settings, have found the same curve in our nearest non-human primate relatives and may be biological.

Rauch defines this midlife slump as "normal and natural." it's not just a "crisis" but "a change in our values and sources of satisfaction, a change in who we are."

"It is about the dawn of 'encore adulthood,' a whole new stage of adult development which is already starting to reshape the way we think about retirement,education, and human potential."

Studies have examined all sorts of extrinsic and intrinsic factors -- income, education, wealth, fast or slow growing economies, depression, and so on. The author provides a very indepth review of these studies and how different kinds of happiness are defined (affective vs longer term life satisfaction).

Humans are programmed to start off big and then switch gears -- so when we get to middle age and we haven't saved the world, we get a negative feedback loop that says "Something's wrong with me."

The keys to surviving or "muddling through" this trough are to first and foremost, accept as "normal" what you are going through and resist the urge for comparison to others or to your own goals/expectations. Then, despite your inclination to become a hermit and hide out -- connect and reach out to others who are going through it or who have gone through it: connectedness is one of the keys to surviving. Finally, make changes in small steps, not giant leaps -- and build on your strengths, skills and experience.

Just before that section of the book -- the author gets into the wisdom studies and some very pragmatic and clear information on what it is and why it is important to those

Rauch also supplies plenty of studies that demonstrate the universal principles of underlying wisdom and where people usually end up on the other side of the trough:

"compassion and prosocial attitudes that reflect concern for the common good; pragmatic knowledge of life; the use of one’s pragmatic knowledge to resolve personal and social problems; an ability to cope with ambiguity and uncertainty, and to see multiple points of view; emotional stability and mastery of one’s own feelings; a capacity for reflection and for dispassionate self-understanding."

There are three basic components of wisdom -- and they have to be balanced with each other, and serve to enrich and strengthen the other components. The author uses "Star Trek" as an example: "In Star Trek, undoubtedly the wisest of all television shows, a recurrent theme is that the most blazingly intelligent character, the Vulcan Spock, lacks the instinctive empathy of Dr. McCoy and the pragmatic decisiveness of Captain Kirk. None of the three alone is wise. Wisdom arises from the (sometimes tense) interaction of the triumvirate."

The studies on wisdom align nicely with the basic tenets of Buddhism -- which may explain why so many folks are drawn to it in middle age, it provides a structure and community for their changing values and beliefs. There's no association between wisdom and intelligence, "What wise people know about is life."

Wisdom, he says, is balanced, reflective, active -- "the happiness curve is a social adaptation, a slow-motion reboot of our emotional software to repurpose us for a different role in society."

"You may be dissatisfied, but you don’t need to be quite so dissatisfied about being dissatisfied!"

It's a long slow adjustment that is normal, not pathological, and you're NOT crazy or losing your mind!

The book is really well written, enjoyable and informative. I really appreciate that it doesn't focus entirely on perimenopause or "hormones" -- but I do wish that there was a bit more coverage on that area aside from a mention of "the grandmother effect" and the interesting bit of trivia that humans are one of 3 species on this planet where the female of the species long outlives her fertility (the other two species are whales).

ORIGINAL URL: http://www.livegreenwearblack.com/201...

© Jennifer R Clark. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may share and adapt this content with proper attribution.

[Lise Petrauskas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was worried that this book would be a feel good self help kind of book but it was much more fact based than I initially thought. I learned quite a bit and incidentally feel more hopeful about the next chapter of my own life. Some of the facts really surprised me, and almost everything I’ve assumed about age and aging is wrong. I was also fascinated to hear the science on how very much our happiness relies on the way we compare ourselves to others.

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating information about the U-shaped happiness curve! If you don't want to read the whole book, you can also skim Jonathan Rauch's excellent article in The Atlantic, which I'll add below. The most eye-opening surprise for me was the strong evidence for a U-shaped happiness curve not just in human societies across the globe, but also in non-human primates, like chimpanzees and orangutans.

[Nopadol Rompho · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a good book but it's somewhat difficult to read especially when there are a lot of continuing texts running 3-4 straight. However, I still recommend you to read it if you want to know why a midlife crisis occurs.

[Chad Fennell · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I set off for a sort of short term midlife retirement / sabbatical, I suppose this book hit me at just the right time. I found the chapters on origins and possible causes fascinating, particularly the work of Hannes Schwandt, who ran a longitudinal survey between 1991 to 2004 on the subject of life satisfaction predictions vs outcomes. Schwandt's work suggests expectations play a key role in our overall life satisfaction:

he found the same result regardless of respondents’ economic status, generation, and even whether they lived in western or eastern Germany (two very different cultures): younger people consistently and markedly overestimated how satisfied they would be five years later, while older people underestimated future satisfaction. So youth is a period of perpetual disappointment, and older adulthood is a period of pleasant surprise. What’s more, Schwandt found that in between those two periods, during middle age, people experienced a sort of double whammy: satisfaction with life was declining (that’s the U-curve, which manifested itself clearly), but expectations were also by then declining (in fact, they were declining even faster than satisfaction itself). In other words, middle-aged people tend to feel both disappointed and pessimistic, a recipe for misery. Eventually, however, expectations stop declining. They settle at a lower level than in youth, and reality begins exceeding them. Surprises turn predominantly positive, and life satisfaction swings upward. And the crossover, in Schwandt’s sample, happened about where you would expect: in the 50s.

As a recent student of Stoicism, the idea that having few expectations and allowing yourself to be surprised when good things happen struck home for me. This is a basic tenet of Stoicism. In fact, Stoics took this idea a step further. In their daily "Premeditatio Malorum" practice, they tried to imagine all the terrible things that could happen to them and how they would deal with them - their children dying, their companies failing...all the worst stuff. It sounds a little morbid, but in light of Schwandt's research, this Stoic practice of pushing back against our natural tendency to overestimate our good fortune strikes me as a legitimate method of boosting our future satisfaction by ensuring we are pleasantly surprised when our lives don't suddenly implode. Their daily rehearsals of misfortune also earned them a set of emotional tools to deal with tragedy when it actually struck.

Unfortunately, I probably lack the discipline for such a practice and so will just have to suffer through the disappointment. But, just knowing there are both biological and social factors that cause many of us (not just me) to take this journey is comforting. And having this knowledge is protective against magical thinking and quick fixes.

I appreciated how Rauch showed his work in this book, going far beyond Schwant's work cited here. It was a quick and enjoyable read.

[Crystal Harkness · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I like about The Happiness Curve was that it was a combination of stories and data about aging and life satisfaction. Having both the personal stories and the science behind the midlife crisis made this book interesting to read. You can tell the author put a lot of work into gathering all the information he needed to write this book. I think no matter what age you are when you read The Happiness Curve it is relatable in some way. People make different choices in there life as to when they go to college (if they do), when they get married, have kids, and start a career, or change careers. So, by the time they are in their forties their lives may have different stressors, accomplishments, and regrets. But I think we all will go through the happiness curve regardless. In a way, being in my 20’s, I felt like well crap it gets harder? I figured by the time I was 40 I would be free of a lot of stress and inner turmoil. But the good news is that the older I get the happier it sounds like I will be based on the data from this book. But like the author says in this book, it’s probably the wisdom that often comes with aging that makes life a bit happier as we get older. I look forward to seeing how that all plays out in my life. I think this book is worth a read.

[Dori Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lots of great insights in this book! I keep referring to it again and again in conversation. The author cites many experts and studies to show that - yes - it’s natural to have a dip in life satisfaction in our 50s, but most of us feel increasingly satisfied as we age.

[Mom2triplets04 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listened to this on audio. I was looking for something to help me deal with turning 50. I was a bit depressed about it. It did help me to feel grateful for what I have accomplished in my 40’s. It was well worth the listen to.

[Gina · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is important and encouraging (if one is in the mid- to late-forties) to know that across cultures and countries (and even with some evidence in other primate species!), there is a U-shaped happiness curve, hitting it's trough around mid- to late-forties. It just gets, generally speaking, better from there, even taking into account looming health issues. This is basically the opposite of what we expect, that life is best in the 20s and goes straight down from there, never to recover. Instead, happiness does decline from the 20s for the next few decades, as our expectations are relentlessly disappointed. Apparently at some point we stop having high expectations for the future, and then are happily surprised for the rest of our lives, making us increasingly happy. This is kind of depressing, kind of funny.

The book started out as an Atlantic article and was expanded into a book, and you can tell. The main idea is interesting, and the filler about life coaching and wisdom is a bit tedious. Also, the perspective was overwhelmingly from the perspective of a highly educated, high achieving striver in a rich nation. I can see how the happiness curve works for someone who sets high career goals, with the goalposts constantly moving to loftier places, throughout ones' early career, and for whom identity is highly caught up in professional success. That honestly isn't many people, although some bubbles can make it feel like it is, and almost all the people discussed in the book are of this type. I want to hear about the auto mechanic or the stay at home mom or the the rice paddy worker in Thailand; what does the happiness curve mean for someone like that?

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for everyone, especially for those of us entering mid life.

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is written by a journalist who had not so much a mid-life crisis but just more like a general slump feeling even when his life was going really well in mid-age (career accolades, happy marriage etc). Then miraculously at around late 40s early 50s he started feeling better, with nothing else really changing in his life. He wanted to investigate this phenomenon and it turns out that the research on happiness shows that cross culturally, even accounting for other factors such as income, gender, etc. there is a statistically significant "happiness curve" tied to age that has been demonstrated by big data sets of hundreds of thousands of people. On average, people will experience some level of "slump" feeling in mid-life though what constitutes mid-life in terms of age varies slightly from culture to culture. A similar phenomenon has been observed in apes as well. Basically there is evidence to suggest that this slump is to some degree biologically built into primates, but there are also cultural factors, and how each individual experiences it is going to vary considerably--some might have a full on 'mid life crisis,' some may feel a general feeling of malaise, and some may not feel it at all.

The book considers this phenomenon by exploring the science on happiness and interviews with the scientists who work in happiness economics, but it also has interviews with some of the ~300 people the author interviewed for the book, talking about their experiences of waxing or waning life satisfaction at different points of their life. It's fascinating, but also validating in some ways to know that the period of life in which you're most settled and have the most going right can actually be the time you feel least satisfied. Part of the slump, says the science, is due to disappointment. In our 20s we are excited, our expectations are high. Through our 30s and into 40s things maybe aren't as great as we anticipated they might be and we're also looking forward with pessimism, assuming that we have only increasing decrepitude to look forward to. But the good news is, contrary to our expectations and stereotypes about getting old, it will get better. In fact in general, the older we get, the happier we are. Another part of it is that we compare ourselves to others, and we tend to compare "up" to the most successful person we know in our field, for example, rather than "down" at someone not doing as well. Although he doesn't address this specifically, social media, I would imagine, exacerbates this comparative effect.

Although I'm not quite middle-aged yet (35 - so probably on the downward curve) the idea of the happiness curve and many of the other ideas about happiness resonated for me.

The last two chapters were a bit more self-helpy, and I found they dragged a little bit, but I think this was because the things he suggests to get through the slump seemed pretty obvious to me, probably because I've already looked into/been implementing a lot of those things because I have a lifelong battle with waxing and waning depression & anxiety (don't go it alone - share how you are feeling with friends/counsellor, try something new, use meditation and mindfulness techniques etc.) The last two chapters also talked about the beginnings of a movement to redefine what older age looks like (the 50s and 60s) similar to how adolescence as a distinct life phase had to be defined with the rise of the industrial revolution. That was somewhat interesting.

I also would have liked to have a little bit more information about the animal studies he notes, both the ape study and the studies about other species experiencing an optimism bias. How do we know animals experience an optimism bias? Do apes experience the happiness curve for the same reasons that humans do?

Overall though I found this a thought provoking and satisfying read.

[Jean Pace · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most valuable things this book did for me was to give me a sense that getting a little sadder in your forties is perfectly normal, not permanent, and that it's okay even if that sadness feels undeserved. That alone would have made this a worthwhile read for me because I have felt inexplicably sadder in my forties and thought I was going nuts and that the rest of my life was going to be a downhill slide (not true according to science!).

I enjoyed all the data he used in the book from across the world, as well as most of the personal examples he used.

The book was a little slim on 'what-to-do-about-its' because, I think, most people don't quite know what to do about it. I would have enjoyed a little more info on how to make the best marriage/family life throughout your forties. I would have enjoyed examples that weren't mostly wealthier career people. It left out anyone without a traditional career trajectory. Additionally, the end petered out a little bit for me--I could have easily skipped it.

Still, a worthwhile read if you're in midlife and wondering why you don't feel amazing all the time.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been recommending this book to everyone I know (aged 45 & up). When going through a difficult time it is SO helpful to have it normalized & to feel like you are not alone. This book uses personal anecdotes, science, and even an amazing work of fine art to make the point that middle age is not a crisis but more of an extended time of malaise for most humans (much like hot flashes being more like repeated heat waves). Notably, what follows this muck are years and years (potentially, decades) of the happiest and most fulfilling time of our lives. The author is a wonderful writer who mixes history, psychology, science, humor, and the voices of many others into an uplifting and enlightening brew. A fantastic book!

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This presented an interesting premise - that happiness is correlated with age and there is typically a dip in perceived happiness in our 40s which then rebounds in our 50s and later - but I didn't particularly enjoy how the theory and accompanying data was presented. It felt like I was slogging to get through the book, even though I typically love this kind of book. They style of personal anecdotes and stories from various people just didn't work well for me. Although I think the author attempted to address the question to what to do about this dip in happiness, I didn't feel like the information was very useful.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read some reviews about this book being repetitive, but I didn’t find it to be that way. There are some clear recurrent themes, but the author consistently presents them with new angles and nuances. I found this book highly informative and useful. My only critique is that the author didn’t cite Mary Catherine Bateson’s original and excellent work Composing a Further Life given its relevance to the topic. Also, how can he mention Life Reimagined without referencing Barbara Bradley Haggerty’s book of the same name and topic?

[Mehrsa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though this book suffers from some seriously lazy writing and repetition, the thesis is so important that I really liked it. Basically, the mid-life dip in happiness is wired in for us humans and it gets better after that horrible decade. He does back up the assertion with some good data though there are a few cracks in the argument (a few correlation vs. causation problems). Still, it felt validating and true so I buy it.

[Joel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book argues that a mid-life crisis is real. He provides evidence of this by explaining happiness economics and a medical overview of what happens to the brain as we age. As I just turned 40 years old this year, I can safely say that the happiness curve describes exactly what I’m going through.

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. Makes me hopefully about my 50s, 60s, and 70s!

[Thi Thi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lẽ ra mình chỉ cho 2 sao, nhưng nghĩ lại vẫn có vài đoạn nói về giá trị của thời gian, của sự kiên nhẫn và lòng biến ơn khiến mình muốn tặng thêm một sao nữa.

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, well that was interesting! It turns out there's a very definite, significant and consistent dip in the happiness and life satisfaction of people centered on their 40's. It's a lot of what fueled the idea of a midlife crisis, except it's not really a crisis because it doesn't usually happen quickly. It's more of a slump, or more properly a transition.

You know how people realize later in their life that it's their friendships and relationships with people that really matter and they're more relationship-driven than ambition-driven, and they're glad now that they "see the light" and realize what's truly important in life? And that now they feel so much wiser than those younger people who haven't figured that out yet? It's not that they never figured it out; it's that, biologically, we change so that those things become our priorities later in life. There's some definite psychology involved (younger people who think they don't have very long to live show this shift in priorities as well, and older people who feel like they still have plenty of time don't show it as much), but there's definitely a biological component. And people are not waking up to what's important as much as their bodies are changing what they consider important.

The transition takes years, though, and the shift in values leads to a certain restlessness and dissatisfaction with life, even when there isn't a good reason for it. A friend recommended this book to me because it helped him understand the restlessness he was experiencing in his life, and it's definitely illuminating. It's helpful to know that it happens, and that people do feel better once it's mostly done.

Another aspect that is extremely interesting psychologically is because this process is biological, it exposes that our bodies and drives often determine our goals. This leaves our conscious thoughts merely to rationalize and try to explain what we think our body is doing, but our conscious minds are definitely not in full control of our goals like we often think they are.

[Monica Mac · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book whilst I was browsing at my local library. It sounded like an interesting read, so I took it home and over the course of a week, I read it. At times, it was a bit too technical for me, but overall, it was an excellent book.

Since I am 55 myself, I thought there might be some nuggets of wisdom in these pages which would explain the quite extraordinary feelings I have been having since I turned 50. My 40's were difficult - I had two teenagers, one with special needs; my mother got very sick and passed away; my father was diagnosed with Alzheimers and went into a nursing home; my career wasn't following the path that I thought it would and I had no partner for the entire decade. However, when I turned 50, even though my situation overall didn't look much better on paper, I started to feel better. Yes, sometimes I get frustrated by my circumstances and my body is slowing down a little, but I really do feel better within myself. I am telling all my younger friends not to worry about turning 50 because it really DOES get better!

I like that this book confirms how I have been feeling, much to my amazement. And I also like, a lot, that I have even more to look forward to in the future :) It is a mindset thing, more than anything else, I have found, and research backs me up. I have also been choosing work based more upon whether I will like the work rather than how much I will be making. It is not everyone's cup of tea, how I make my living (I have several casual jobs on the go at once as well as doing voluntary work for a hospice) but it suits ME and that is the most important thing. I am also no longer worried about how many friends I have - quality is far more important than quantity. I used to be very self-conscious about so many things, but I care much less what people think of me and that is really liberating. Viva your 50's and beyond!

4.5 stars from me.

Thank you Mr Rauch, this was a really good book to be reading right now.

[Garrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recommended for anyone in midlife. The happiness curve is a natural phenomenon tracked through multiple species, and has been charted in multiple societies for the past several decades. In the US, we tend to bottom out around age 50.

Few go through an actual midlife crisis, but almost everyone feels a general malaise and disappointment as your life hasn't lived up to your early adult dreams and high expectations. As we age out of midlife, we gradually reboot ourselves into happiness. Expectations are jettisoned. We shed stress and live more in the now. We became more grateful, even as our bodies begin to fail us.

His own father, who had an explosive temper, grew out of his rage in his fifties. Rauch asked him why that happened. "I just stopped having five-dollar reactions to nickel provocations."

Rauch notes a negative feedback loop in midlife that turns people into their own worst critics (Why am I so ungrateful? Where's my Washington Post book review? How come my friends are earning so much more money than me?) He points out that comparing oneself to another is unnecessary and avoidable - everyone's circumstances are different, and there simply is no comparison.

Lastly, Rauch addresses the midlife reboot, how the question of retirement has so significantly changed, and how people are finding meaningful, connecting work that they can carry into their final years. That I'm looking forward to as I plan not for retirement, but for the next chapter in just a few years. My curve is bending upward.

[Scott Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting take on how, in what should be the prime time of success in life, is also seen as the most unhappy time of life. People will joke about the "mid-life crisis" when people hit 40 and "Middle Age," but according to Rauch, there is something more than jokes about red sports cars. Through personal observation, personal accounts and scientific study, he documents that when surveyed, many people will experience times of less happiness in their 40s than either in their 30s or 50s. For many of those surveyed, they have everything going for them as far as professional and personal achievements, but yet, there is some sort of either discontentment or feeling in inadequacy that will impact people. Hence, on the many charts documenting levels of happiness vs. age, the numbers are lower in the 40s...but then seem to go up once a person hits the 50s.

It is a quick and fascinating read as to how that can be. In the book, Rauch discusses various theme such as societal pressures, the struggle people have when they compare themselves with their peers and the science of wisdom. He also discusses ways that people can cope with the sense of unhappiness that life seems to have in a person's 40s. For someone who is entering Middle Age, this is not exactly encouraging, but it is also heartening that getting older, even if the body starts to break down, the sense of happiness will return/increase.

[Danielle W · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was not your typical "how to be happier" self help read. Instead, it discusses multiple scientific studies that show most people are likely to rate their life satisfaction higher in their 20s and 50s and will bottom out with a significant dip of life disappointment in their 40s. It explains the variety of reasons why (e.g., we are hard wired for optimism so everyone expects to have "above average" health, professional success, etc. so once health realities, divorce, and job dissatisfaction begin to set in, it sets us up for that big reckoning we have come to call the "midlife crisis" -- a term the author thinks is harmful and should be rejected). I have to say that my enjoyment of this book almost followed the happiness curve where the middle of it was a real boring slog, but there was sufficient wisdom in the beginning and end to have made it a worthwhile read. The moral of the story is that the only goals worth chasing are health and meaning in your work and relationships because the time and energy we put towards worrying about title, prestige, salary, etc will still leave you unfulfilled in the end. Easier said than done but a worthy reminder.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciate that he took the time to summarize the leading research on happiness and explain it to me in lay friendly terms. That part I found valuable. But I didn’t feel he contributed anything notable of his own. If anything he added confusion by collecting hundreds of anecdotal interviews without organizing or aggregating or summarizing them. He just peppered them in even when they didn’t support the points he was making. It was basically a research review article with a lot of padding to make a 200 page book.

[Courtney Smith Atkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has a great message and was very thoughtful and meaningful to me. It really was a good listen but I did catch myself drifting off. I think I most benefitted from the distinctions drawn between depression and not being satisfied. These are different and we should recognize that.

There much discussion about the mid life trough versus the mid life crisis. The crisis is acute and over (you buy a car or piece of jewelry and move on). The trough (I don't love the name) is longer term and requires one to slog through any unknowns to come out the other side in a better state.

This was good, 3.5.

[Noelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started reading this shortly after my 50th birthday, but wish I started several years earlier! Reading this while you’re in “the trough” as opposed to on the upwards swing would have been more beneficial.

As other reviews mention, the writing does get a bit repetitive. But I liked his overall message, and could relate to it - totally understand that not everyone will.