Source: http://blogs.forbes.com/frederickallen/2011/03/15/how-to-live-a-long-and-happy-life/

Keep working, have a sense of purpose—and don’t try to be happy. That’s the upshot of a couple of recent reports on several extensive studies.

Emily Yoffe wrote in Slate last week about The Longevity Project, a new book about a decades-long study begun by the psychologist Lewis Terman at Stanford in 1921. The study selected young students with especially high I.Q.s and followed them through their lives, and it found, in brief, that conscientious people, the kind who always meet deadlines, thrived better than the happy-go-lucky; it didn’t pay to be too optimistic, as excess cheerfulness might leave you unprepared for when bad times struck; long, happy marriages correlated with long, happy lives but didn’t seem causative; and a retirement of carefree leisure was highly overrated. Keeping working at something meaningful seemed much better for both physical and psychological well-being.

Meanwhile an article in The Wall Street Journal today reports on several studies that show that having a sense of purpose is far more beneficial than trying to be happy. Research at Rush University in Chicago found that “those reporting a lesser sense of purpose in life were more than twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease compared with those reporting greater purpose in life.” A study of more than 7,000 people by researchers at the University of Wisconsin found far greater health among people who derived well-being from meaningful activity than among those who pursued hedonistic enjoyment.

As the Journal article’s author, Shirley S. Wang, sums up the message, “In some cases, too much focus on feeling happy can actually lead to feeling less happy, researchers say.” Or as Ed Diener, a retired professor at the University of Illinois puts it, “Quit sitting around worrying about yourself and get focused on your goals.”

Of course, there’s a big element of luck in there too, and extreme old age is rarely much fun for anyone. Emily Yoffe also discusses another new book, Never Say Die (subtitled The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age), by Susan Jacoby, a blunt look at gerontology that tells us, “In real old age, as opposed to fantasyland, most people who live beyond their mid-eighties can expect a period of extended frailty, illness, and disability before they die.” But Jacoby, too, feels that working hard may be the best revenge: “Being forced to work longer, or to think about developing new skills to augment an inadequate retirement income, might turn out to be an invigorating kick in the pants for boomers rather than a life sentence at hard labor.”

I can report from my own experience that my parents are doing remarkably well in their late eighties, and while I’ve never heard either of them discuss happiness per se, my mother keeps usefully busy at all kinds of things, including being a very active member of the board of the college where she used to work, and my father helps run an early music organization and has a new book out—I’ve lost track of how many he’s written—an illustrated history of the Tribeca neighborhood of New York. Anecdotal evidence, but there it is.