Carl Pilimar interviewed seniors in their 70s, 80s, and 90s about what makes life fulfilling. They said the five things that matter most are expressing gratitude, spending time with children, savoring daily pleasures, loving your work, and choosing your partner carefully. Their biggest regret: worrying about things that never happened.
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Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick and welcome to the No Days Off podcast where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Let's get into it today. I want to talk about happiness, the pursuit of happiness. Now happiness is a topic that we've all probably read about how to become happier, how to achieve happiness, what that looks like. We've read about it. We've listened to podcasts about it. I feel like it's, of course, a rather prominent topic all of the time, but especially the past few years, call it 4 years post-pandemic, or since the pandemic started in March 2020, I feel like there's been an increased focus on what leads to happiness. And there are plenty of experts out there, but I recently came across a study that I found to be pretty, pretty profound, profound enough to want to share it with the No Days Off Nation today. So there is a gerontologist. Gerontologist, I had actually looked that up. Gerontologist is a professional who specializes in the study of aging. There's a gerontologist named Carl Pilimar. And Carl Pillimer wrote a book called The 30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans. And, and what Carl had done here is, you know, he'd seen numerous studies about people in their 70s and 80s and beyond saying that these people in the 70s, 80s, and beyond were actually happier than younger people. So he was intrigued. He kept meeting older people. Many of these older people who had lost loved ones, who had been through lots of different difficulties, had serious health problems, but they were all happier. They were all fulfilled. They were all deeply enjoying life. And he found himself asking the question, what's that all about? So one day it hits Carl. He decides maybe older people just know things about a happy life that younger people don't know. Maybe older people could see things that the younger people can't see. If there's any population demographic that could lay claim to expertise in living a happy life, it's probably our seniors. So what does Pillimer do? He goes out and decides to study this on an even deeper level, and he spends about 7 years trying to understand the practical wisdom of older people, understand from them and their experiences what leads to happiness. Now, the number one lesson that Carl picked up along his journey, the 7-year quest to determine what makes people happy, the number one lesson he learned from these seniors— and the older the respondent, actually, the more likely they were to say that life passes by in what seems like an instant. Life is short. Now, when elders tell younger people that life is short, it's not to be pessimistic. It's instead just trying to offer perspective. Perspective in the hopes that this inspires better decisions, ones that prioritize the things that actually matter. Many of these seniors would say things like, "I wish I would have learned XYZ," in my 30s instead of learning it in my 60s. I wish I would have recognized that life is short and I should prioritize those things that matter most. I wish I could have more time. You know, I could have had more time to enjoy my life based on these understandings. Unfortunately though, we didn't have this future hindsight. I mean, this future hindsight. It's just current foresight for these seniors. Now, time, as Carl determines, is the currency of life. It's the ultimate currency of life. I think we could all agree on that. And the implications of managing the, the short time we have on this earth are like those of managing any sort of scarce resource that we have. We have to use these scarce resources wisely, and we have to prioritize what's most important. So what were the most important things according to the seniors that Carl interviewed? These 70s, 80s, you know, even 90-something-year-olds. What did they think were the most important things? Here's the list that he came up with based on his analysis. Number 1, say things now to people you care about, whether it's expressing gratitude, asking for forgiveness, or just getting information say things now to the people you care most about. Number 2, spend the maximum amount of time with your children. Number 3, savor daily, uh, pleasures instead of waiting for big-ticket items to make you happy. Number 4, work in a job you love. And number 5, choose your mate carefully. Don't just rush in. Now, these were the 5 things that the senior citizens he interviewed and he studied over a 7-year course of time cited as the most important things. Now, the list, the list of things they said weren't important was equally revealing. The things they said weren't important. Number 1, none of the people he studied said that to be happy, you should work as hard as you can to get money. None of the people he studied said it was important to be as wealthy as the people around them. The third thing he cites, none of the people he interviewed said you should choose your career based on its earnings potential. And lastly, none said that they regretted not getting even with someone who slighted them. Now, of all the things he learned, the biggest regret that these seniors had He said that this was the most prominent thing shared in terms of regret. It was worrying about things that never happened. As one respondent said, worrying wastes your life. What Carl kind of came away with, aside from these amazing lists, which I encourage you to go back and listen to, just look at what's most important to these people that have lived pretty long, you know, adventurous, fulfilling lives. What did they determine were the most important, the things that, and yet things that just didn't matter, the things that weren't important. Well, while Carl cites these things, and that's, that's, they're amazing in and of themselves. He says maybe the greatest thing he got out of this, this study, these 7 years he spent analyzing this came from one of his interviewees. When he asked about her source of happiness, he shares that she thought about it. And she answered that, "In my 89 years, I've learned that happiness is a choice. It's not a condition." Happiness is a choice. It's not a condition. According to Carl, the seniors he met with made the key distinction between events that happen to us on the one hand and our internal attitude toward happiness on the other. Happy in spite of. Happiness is not a passive condition. Dependent on external events. According to these seniors, it is not the result of our personalities, just being born a happy person. Instead, happiness requires a shift, a conscious shift in our outlook in which we choose daily optimism over pessimism, hope over despair. I love this, this study that Carl Pillemar did here, the 7-year study he did. There's so much to be learned from, from those that have spent decades upon decades on this earth. And, and there's just so much to take away. And I think we should be studying those that have come well before us. The sooner we can learn some of the lessons that were shared within this study, the sooner we can reach a point where maybe we are more fulfilled, you know, happier, with respect to what we're doing each and every day and recognizing that it's the journey and not necessarily the accomplishment or the event itself. That's all I have for you today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.
