1. A graph that caught my attention (and made me happy!)…
I came across a book that I have not read yet (but will) called The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50, by Jonathan Rauch. I want to share that Happiness Curve, as it is quite interesting (see below). Basically, our overall happiness and satisfaction with life takes on a U-shaped curve as we age. Our satisfaction starts out high, dips around our late-40’s and early 50’s, then turns upward after that. That low point isn’t misery, but explained as general malaise. And most people, I discovered, do not experience what many refer to as a midlife crisis. Good to know!!! There are lots of reasons for this Happiness Curve (i.e. expectations exceeding reality when we are younger, lower stress, and improved emotional regulation later in life), which I will dig into deeper in a future blog, but just know that we can look forward to an upward trajectory in happiness as we age beyond 50.
2. Why I expect miracles…
The other day I had a patient state, “I don’t expect a miracle.” My response… “Actually, I do expect miracles, but I don’t get discouraged if they don’t happen.” I try to make sure patients know that the body is capable of miraculous things. When patients share really bad news about a diagnosis they, or someone close to them, has been given, I pull out a book called Spontaneous Remission: An Annotated Bibliography. “From the 3,500 reports of spontaneous remission reported over 10 years by physicians, this bibliography gives full citations for 1,350 and includes case reports for over 400.” These are medically documented cases, where someone had a medical condition, such as cancer, and then they didn’t. Their condition just went away, WITHOUT medical treatment or medical explanation. This is not a book you would buy, as it is technical and does not give you solutions (and it’s over 700 pages). I love it because I can put this big, heavy book down in front of a patient and say… “Look, I don’t want to give you false hope, or pretend I have the answers, but here are hundreds of cases where people just spontaneously healed. So no matter what, just know that the human body is an amazing thing, it has the potential to recover from ANY disease or condition, and miracles DO happen.”
3. Something I try not to do…
As humans, we love to complain. Since complaining doesn’t help much, I try not to complain about two things… 1. Things I cannot control (like the weather), and 2. Things or situations that I have created. I want you to go into the weekend thinking about the second one. It is silly for us to create a situation, then complain about it. For example… if you signed up for something, such as a class, a league, or a program, then whine constantly about it, that makes no sense. If you willingly embark on a project, then complain about it every day, that’s foolish. And I am not being critical of anyone else, as we all do it as humans. What made me think about this? I am having work done on my house, work that I chose to do, then caught myself complaining about it. The logical part of myself spoke up and said, “Hey dummy, if you didn’t want the hassles of this project, you shouldn’t have done it.” So… think about something that you are constantly complaining about. Now think about what effect the complaining actually has on that. NONE! If complaining doesn’t help… then stop. If you’re complaining about something you’ve created… stop!
